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remain sometimes after twenty years inescapably American. They be tray themselves to the visitor from home by their wistful, half-concealed, half-feverish concern with events and personalities in the land they have deserted. They are Rip Van Winkles who have been all these years only half asleep, and in their dozing have caught whispers of the world to which they were awake. They seem, many of them, to be minor characters out of the less competent of Henry James's novels. You are peculiarly sure to find them in or above Florence, among the hills of the island paradise of Capri, among the almost luridly lyrical colors of Taormina. For it is Europe as a soft esthetic refuge that has brought and kept these here. A rococo villa above the Arno is their surrogate for the Ivory Tower. Twenty years in Italy have made them not the least Italian in their tastes or sympathies. Their Italian is often primitive, and they know no natives other than their servants or Andrea del Sarto and Botticelli. Theirs is a closed world consisting of luncheon parties at each other's villas, or the entertainment, sometimes on a grand scale, of a tolerable spirit from the barbarous active frontier world which they disdain from afar. A faint scorn and a faint unmistakable discontent are in their voices, their faces, and their words. They will never come home, and, for all their obvious luxury and apparent peace, they have for twenty years been spiritually starved and emotionally homeless. They have lost contact with the only public opinion that has any meaning for them. There is nothing particularly exciting

to do, and the rôle of spectator has lost all its excitements, since the spectacle is no longer a novelty. They are the most unhappy Americans in Europe. They are homesick, and they will never come home.

22

Out of these multitudinous impressions of these so various Americans you meet abroad, you begin to frame an impression of a civilization whose mores have combined to stamp a race. The theory of the meltingpot may be true or false; the anthropologists may argue that out among themselves. The notion of an American race may be a fairy-tale or a remote possibility. But meeting your fellow-countrymen abroad leads you to accept the fairy-tale and believe in the possibility. It is more than the lean jaw, the straight head, the even, always slightly nasal voice. They may be young or old, eager tourists or disillusioned exiles; they have certain common qualities that are as striking as the dark skin of the Italians or the reticent unconcern of the Britisher. the Britisher. The very qualities that sometimes make them offensive in Europe are the defects of a certain rough virtue.

Mark Twain long ago celebrated with broad strokes and defensive sympathy the American innocent abroad. He made most persuasive that honest provincialism which refuses to think of guides as prophets or of guide-books as Bibles, and which will not be bulldozed into awe by things that are simply famous or old. One has laughed a thousand times over Americans who divide among themselves the task of seeing a museum, or let one member of a family do the outside of a cathedral

while the other one takes the inside. But there is something to be said for the traveler who will not stay more than ten minutes in the Pitti Palace in Florence if he finds the pictures dull. Much of what is condemned as Philistinism may be defended as honesty; much that passes for crudeness is simply lack of cultural pretense.

The American, especially the young American abroad, is often sniffed at for too much humility rather than for too little. There is of course, Mark Twain's impudent rough-neck who blows out a light that he learns has been burning a thousand years. But there are thousands of others all too ready to think that any little light of other days outshines even the blazing contemporary sun. There are numberThere are numberless youths too timid to be outright American, and anxious to be courteously imitative of other people's habits and manners and accents. But if a youngster is humble for a time in Europe, it will not hurt him or hurt his capacity to be a citizen of his own time and country. Why should he not be hushed into humility by a civilization whose mere age and range must bewilder a young

citizen of a young country? When he gets home there will be plenty of people about, to teach him respect for the bright and shining and new.

"Punch" smiled once at a mythical American girl who asked a London policeman the nearest way to an English skylark. But that naïve hunt for background was based, after all, on a loving acquaintance with Shelley. There is, after all, something appealing in a traveler who goes hunting for a skylark of which a poet has caused her to dream.

The roughness and the humility, the nervous haste, the nostalgia and the sense of alienation that are revealed by Americans in Europe are symptoms of the fact that the American abroad is a type and a character. He is always a stranger, a rather self-conscious stranger in a world he feels to be different from his own. It is from that sense of difference often that an American learns to discover his own country, and his own implication in its life and fortunes. He goes home, in most cases, a rather finer American. Europe has become naturalized in his eyes and imagination; often for the first time America has become naturalized in his head and heart.

ABSENCE

HELEN BAKER PARKER

'Tis not the parting that I fear, but your return; Not fond farewell, but words you may not say

in greeting;

Not seas uncharted where unmeasured planets burn, But distance traveled in your heart before

our meeting.

THE FARMER'S PLACE UNDER THE SUN

T

His Basic Difficulties a Menace to Our Stability

WILLIAM M. JARDINE

HERE is a rather widespread impression in the cities that agriculture in the United States has recovered from its post-war difficulties and that it needs no legislative consideration or other attention at this time. It is true that there has been a remarkable improvement in farm conditions since 1921. But progress has been slow and has been, broadly speaking, a succession of regional advances. The Wheat Belt, the South, the Pacific territory, the dairy regions, the diversified East, have made substantial progress, with, however, various setbacks from time to time, such as the present cotton situation. That part of the Western range country which is devoted to sheep has prospered, but the cattle territory, like the Corn Belt, has faced heavy odds for five years, though it now is on the road to better times.

All this, however, is the surface situation. The community at large has not seen the close-up shock of the depression period on the farms. It is difficult to visualize the details of an economic depression that spread itself through thousands upon thousands of homes over the length and breadth of the land. When the country as a whole attempts to appraise the current agricultural

situation, the picture must be cast against the background of events since 1920. The country must understand that and give it weight.

Underneath the surface the farmers of the United States are struggling with a disparity between their receipts and their costs, debts, and fixed charges that is peculiarly a heritage of the war. They are struggling with a problem of recurrent unavoidable surpluses, which is the outgrowth of the modern division of labor or complex exchange economy. These basic difficulties are a serious drag on our agriculture and a menace to the stability and prosperity of the United States generally. It is a wholesome and significant sign of the times that the men of affairs in urban life are giving so attentive an ear to agricultural problems. We make history fast in this young country, so fast that it is a little difficult sometimes to maintain the perspective on some of our shifting economic issues.

It was only the day before yesterday, figuratively speaking, that one could go up the Hudson Valley, out through the Mohawk, and into the Genesee country, and one was in the heart of the nation's granary. Western New York was the great wheat belt, and Ohio was the frontier range

country. Men still living can tell first-hand stories of the old cattle drives every fall from Ohio over the mountains down to Philadelphia and New York. Then, within a single lifetime, the vast stretches of our West were opened up. Back of this westward sweep surged an irresistible pressure of population. The great necessity was for development of the natural resources to get the land opened up and set to producing.

Among other things, it has produced some problems of agricultural adjustment which are now nothing less than a national concern. A narrow view of agricultural problems will no longer suffice, a fact which the best minds in city as well as country recognize. The business men of this country are interested in keeping agriculture in the market. The consumers of this country are interested in the maintenance of an even flow of food products at prices they can afford to pay.

I want to make clear that, for the long pull, I am an optimist on farming conditions. Our agriculture may be distressed, but it is far from disabled. It is at bottom a sound going business. In the long run, it will have its measure of prosperity, for such cannot be permanently withheld from that part of the community which produces the necessaries of life and which does so on terms of high relative efficiency.

It is not necessary to advert to the obvious interrelationships by which our agriculture and urban industry are so closely knit. The United States has made long strides on the road to becoming an industrial country. But our resources in land are enormous; our agricultural pro

duction is the most efficient in the world; our rural population is a strong and virile social group. During the last three or four years the cities have enjoyed a marked degree of prosperity which has made the farmer's difficulties stand out the more sharply by contrast.

It is an unquestionable fact that agriculture has not been getting its fair share of the national income. That is not due to any lack of efficiency in production. The question is, of course, what can be done toward solving the problem. It is a question to be approached sanely and carefully. The approach to the solution seemingly must be both from the angle of action on the farm and from that of public action.

That such sound legislation as will help agriculture to an equitable place in the existing economic order is a national concern and responsibility, is admittedly true. For example, it has seemed to me fundamental that legislation designed to affect the prices of farm products must have full regard not only for the common interests, but likewise for the conflicting interests of all regions. We can get nowhere with a national legislative program that helps some farmers at the expense of others. I believe our national policy should reckon with the fact that agriculture is not yet restored to equality in the general economic situation. Whatever responsibility for this situation rests with public agencies must be fully recognized. Much helpful legislation has been passed during the last five or six years, but more can be done. The expansion of our farmland area may require legislative action. I am opposed to bringing

new areas under cultivation until we have found a market for the products we are now producing, as I am against attempts to determine economic law by means of legislation. The four major subjects demanding attention are freight-rates, taxation, utilization of the public domain, and coöperation.

One thing stands out forcibly; that is, the natural division of interest between great agricultural sections of the country, which are, in many cases, important consumers of each other's products. Farmers of the East are heavy buyers of Western grain. The North is a buyer of cotton products. The South is a heavy buyer of Northern pork products, grains, and feedstuffs. Even within the same region the grain grower's finished product may be the live-stock feeder's raw material, and so on. With regard to the basic surplus, the problem is not confined to any one section. It is a problem that fruit growers, live-stock raisers, dairymen, cotton and potato growers, tobacco raisers, grain producers, and producers of nearly every staple farm product have to grapple with from time to time.

The industrial community has shared in the nation's prosperity, although the picture differs as between certain industries. The textile and coal industries are examples of groups which have had serious difficulties through this period of generally good times, while a great and prolonged boom has carried urban development forward in a marvelous fashion. Accordingly farmers in certain sections have fared much better than others. Sheep raisers, for example, have

made profits for three years. Wheat growers did well last year and are doing well now. doing well now. Dairy and poultry producers felt the depression relatively less than certain other farmers.

With regard to cotton, the basic economic conditions have not altered, and I am convinced that the situation is very largely due to panic conditions which seem temporary. Cotton producers must soon realize that the intrinsic value of the 1926 crop has not changed. Cotton is not a perishable commodity. We have the necessary facilities for storing the crop for months or even years and ample credit to carry it. Cotton in storage is probably the soundest basis for credit that we know. The people of the world need all the cotton that we can produce, and we are in a position to supply their needs in an orderly manner. Meanwhile all private and federal agencies have been made available to care for the emergency.

Certainly I do not share the view, expressed by some, that a large cotton crop or a large carry-over from one season to the next is a misfortune. It is to the best interest of both producer and consumer to avoid wide fluctuations in cotton prices. The best way to avoid such fluctuations is to be prepared to carry continuously an ample reserve, sufficiently large to absorb any surplus from one or more good seasons and to supplement the shortage of several bad seasons. We are now in position to begin the creation of such a a reserve. In fact, we should accept the present opportunity and make the most of it.

Agriculture cannot make its ad

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